How to Start Using Social Media for your Business

Gerry Moran, a MarketingThink.com blogger, shares the following 5 steps to using social media for your company. The steps are creatively presented as given by Yoda, one of the greatest Jedi masters who ever lived in the history of the Star Wars universe. Apparently, a marketer wanted help on becoming a ‘social media jedi.’

Moran emphasizes that activating a personal social brand on social media platforms is different from activating social media messaging on these channels. When customers and potential customers access your company’s social media page, it should be a humanizing experience to them.

Moran says that the brand is extended and amplified by regularly putting up status updates, making these updates relevant by including links to informative articles, sharing relevant blog posts, liking posts, and commenting, retweeting liking and sharing.

Here are Moran’s 5 steps to incorporate social media into your company.

1. Set an objective before you start using social media. You should ask yourself why you need to start social media for your work. The following are examples of simple yet effective goals. First, you want to start using social media so that you can expand the reach of the message of your company. Second, use social media to provide content that is relevant to the needs and the interests of your audience.

2. Improve the “curbside appeal” of your social media profile. Moran suggests that you should make your social media profiles, such as your Twitter or LinkedIn profiles, smart and neat so that you can get your audience to purchase from you.

For the most part the only important part of a search engine results page is the first page. In particular, studies show that 94 percent of searchers only scan the first page. Your LinkedIn profiles, although they rank higher than other social media profiles, will only make it to the first page if it is complete.

In addition, making your social media profile neat, trim, elegant and smart can only do good things with regards to your credibility.

3. Track, then Talk. Observe by stalking a couple of social media channels from some companies, thought leaders, media publications, competition, prospects, clients and coworkers. Use their guide so that you will know what kind of content to share, what words you should use, and the links that you should provide.

Moran points out that social media content has a rule of thumb: 1 percent create content, 9 percent revise content, and 90 percent read content. You should be a part of the 10 percent that create and revise content, so that you can reach the 90 percent who read.

4. Be an expert of a few social media channels. According to InSites Consulting, the maximum number of brands that an average person interacts with is five. Moran suggests that you should not concentrate on just using one social media channel; neither should you try out a lot of channels at the same time. First, be an expert in Hootsuite, Twitter and LinkedIn, then try out other channels after that.

In particular, Moran says that you can use LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to people who aren’t following you. Hootsuite is also useful for social network integration for various social media channels, helping you manage your messaging and listening.

5. Understand the Rules of Engagement. The rules of engagement have differences for each social media channel. This implies that for each social media channel, you should know what the best message timing, cadence, tone and overall style should be. In order to make a difference, you need to know how to deliver that right LinkedIn status or make that one or more effective tweets.

So these are the 5 steps to incorporate social media into your business as shared by Moran. The following is the infographic version of the list, featuring Yoda the Jedi master.

Being a “social media jedi” can be done in 5 steps as suggested by Gerry Moran. (Image: via business2community.com)